Yshani Perinpanayagam

“Being a composer is like reading your diary out loud”

Yshani is a composer, pianist and music director from London, specialising in not specialising.

Her sound is an ever-evolving mash-up of her varied musical tastes and personal worlds; this currently includes elements of contemporary classical music, dirty grooves, the influence of her Sri Lankan parents, game and play, melancholy, and activism.

What does being Yshani’s patron look like?

Yshani is in touch fairly regularly with her patrons, sharing early drafts of new work, personal revelations about her process and improvised experimentations on rough-and-ready material, peppered with thoughtful and funny reflections on her journey as she continues to find her feet as a composer.

She also shares insights into her performance career as a improv pianist on stage, conducting in an orchestra pit, in a recording studio and beyond!

Supporting a composer on Music Patron gives you a first-hand perspective on the many elements within the creative process, and an understanding of an authentic journey of a composer. You can find out more about what it’s like to be a patron here 

Biography

As a composer, commissions include works for the London Sinfonietta, Onyx Brass, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, St. Martin’s Voices and music for a play about Fanny Mendelssohn, with her arrangements performed by CHROMA, Chineke! and for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s Share Sound.

As a multi-genre pianist and music director, Yshani has performed at venues from Wigmore Hall to the London Palladium, at events from Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival to the Barbican Mime Festival, and with artists from the Philharmonia to Nina Conti. She is pianist of the Del Mar Piano Trio and Carismático Tango Band, a regular improvising pianist with The Comedy Store Players, and a guest broadcaster on BBC Radio 3.

Yshani was music director / conductor for triple-Oliver winner Emilia at the Vaudeville Theatre, Ruination at Royal Opera House, Street Scene for Opéra Bastille, Passion starring Ruthie Henshall, Poppea for English Touring Opera, Goat for Rambert Dance Company / Lost Dog Dance, circus troupe Circa at the Barbican, Les Noces for New Movement Collective, Longborough Opera’s 2022 Waley-Cohen / Caccini programme, and with Olivier award winning show Showstopper! The Improvised Musical. She was Consultant MD for Olivier-winning Wolf Witch Giant Fairy, a collaboration between Royal Opera House and Little Bulb Theatre. She is currently music director of new music-theatre work The F**gots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Philip Venables & Ted Huffman, co-commissioned by Manchester International Festival, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Southbank Centre, Bregenzer Festspiele and NYU Center in New York City.

Listen See How They Run; – Workshop performance by Ligeti Quartet | Yshani Perinpanayagam

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Recent updates from Yshani

🔒 Managing far-off deadlines as a theatre composer

I’ve just met a deadline! Sure, I made it for myself, but it was for good reason…

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🔒 A failed task for now…or was it?

I just wanted to give Patrons a little update on that little challenge I set myself a while back…and how

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🔒 Music for a play – blending myself with Fann...

A peak behind the scenes as to how I’m blending my skills as a composer, an improviser, a performer in comedy a...

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🔒 Bonjour de Paris!

Your favourite cheffe d’orchestre has an update on conducting for Opéra national de Paris. She’s been ha...

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🔒 Re-railing my creativity

I respond to an impromptu playlist in real time in an effort to nourish my creativity. It genuinely seems to have dom...

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🔒 Scary Commission 🎃

I can’t believe I’m being let loose on this commission – swinging between being frozen in fear to f...

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🔒 How am I today?

Just a little update with bits and pieces or premieres and publishings while I have my hands pretty full with a show ...

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🔒 Another Speed-Carol!

I speed-wrote a carol for an anthology! I discovered unexpected things about what seems to make a carol a carol.

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🔒 Could it be more composer growth?!

I broke a pattern and avoided making one of my favourite mistakes. Who knew this was possible? Let’s enjoy this...

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🔒 Short film commission a.k.a. “The Collaborat...

Fruits of a collaboration failure! I thought it would be fun to share something that nobody else will ever hear!

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4 comments

🔒 Premiere Night: Mini-Update

Feeling lots of big feelings as a composer and as a human ahead of the premiere of my Music for

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🔒 A little squashed, a little bruised.

Is this a diary entry? Is this a big life, self and career realisation? I can’t see the wood for the trees at t...

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🔒 Composer Growth? A Rambling

This month has been really revealing for me in terms of how my artistic intersectionality impacts me as specifically a

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🔒 An important memory

Doing my tax return and going through old diaries lets me relive – whether I want to or not – my past mon...

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🔒 The pianist meets the composer?

I’ve loved music directing / performing in Ruination at Royal Opera House. In addition, I really fell in love with

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🔒 Mini-update a.k.a. A teenage composer in a grown-u...

More on that string trio… Shh! Don’t tell anyone 😇🤫

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🔒 The Music Patron Q&A

A series of interviews with our Music Patron composers talking about their musical inspirations and what life as a co...

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🔒 The earliest of drafts!

Who knows if this will survive the night?! I’ve been asked to write a string trio for a concert next

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🔒 It’s a premiere night 🤩

About to make my way to the premiere of a song I wrote with Laura Attridge; here’s a little about

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🔒 Supersonic Mirth 🎄

I saw a call-out for Christmas Carols and figured it presented me with a good excuse to write another one.

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🔒 Replugging in my creativity

Returning to London having conducted and arranged a baroque opera left me quite out of touch with the boundary-free s...

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🔒 I’m back from the depths of Arrangerland (so...

Just me chatting to the camera in a heat wave about everything I’ve been up to preparing for opening our produc...

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🔒 Bits of Me: Video 1

The first in a series of videos where I introduce myself to you properly. Here is a behind the scenes video of me and...

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🔒 There she is!

She’s been opening a show! Here’s a sneak peak of what I’ve been up to, MDing Passion by Sondheim i...

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🔒 Who do you think I am?

A little introduction to how I’d like us to write a little piece together…

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🔒 Composer Commentary: i only bite because you make ...

Me chatting away about how and why my piece for piano synchronised to a perfect game of snake came into

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🔒 New Patrons – Thank You…and Welcome!

Thank you so much for your support. Here’s a little more on about how I am hoping to use this

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